to the fourth floor of Aincrad, even if you accounted for the fact that it was night. As I steered, I thought back fondly on my time gliding through the waterways with Asuna in our white-painted gondola, the Tilnel. Up front, Alice turned her head and pulled me out of my memories. “So…what is it that Dr. Koujiro wanted with you?” “Huh…?” My mind blanked for a moment, and then I realized she was talking about the message regarding the “expensive cake shop.” “Ah, right…Dr. Koujiro was just sending along a message from someone else, actually.” “Aha…I had a feeling that was the case,” Alice murmured. She turned to face me directly. “It was Kikuoka who summoned you, wasn’t it?” Based on her tone of voice and expression, I could tell that she did not have a high opinion of Seijirou Kikuoka. I couldn’t blame her—she’d hardly ever had a real conversation with him. He’s very fishy, I’ll admit, but he has his good sides, too. Like when he pays for fancy pieces of cake. “Did you come with me just because you wanted to ask about that?” I prompted. “That’s not the only reason. So…what did Kikuoka say?” I hesitated, then remembered that I was probably going to explain it all tonight anyway. I slowed the speed of the dugout canoe and put it briefly: “Someone from somewhere infiltrated the Underworld.” “……!” Her blue eyes went wide, and she rose slightly from her seat. “An intruder…?! Who was it?!” “Total mystery. He said there’s no way to investigate from the real world.” She froze in her half-standing position, then sighed and sat back down.
“…I wonder why Dr. Koujiro did not tell me.” “Because she knew you’d dive-bomb right in at the first chance.” “It is only recently that I learned your slang term dive-bomb does not necessarily refer to an aerial bombardment technique,” she remarked, which I took as a sign that she’d calmed down a bit. “Yes, I cannot deny it. I suppose I might have a tendency to bristle and lose myself in anger faster than others.” You mean you never noticed that before?! I thought, wisely keeping it to myself. “Look, I know how it feels to not be able to sit still in an emergency. But it’s completely impossible to find a single individual hiding in the Underworld if you don’t have a plan for it. You know that…” “So they’re just going to be left on their own?” “Not at all. Kikuoka called me up to ask me to dive into the Underworld, actually.” “…! If you are going, then I would also—,” she started, rising from her seat again, until I held out a hand to stop her. “Of course you’re coming with me. I only agreed to it on that condition. Don’t blame Dr. Koujiro for not telling you about the intruder. She’s thinking of our safety above all else.” “…I understand. She is one of the people in the real world whom I trust the most.” “Uh…am I one of them, too?” “Questions like that are what lowers one’s trust in you,” she said, looking supremely annoyed. But she did add another question of her own. “Was I the only person you asked to take along?” “No, I…uh…also asked for Asuna.” “I had a feeling.” I attempted to read her profile, but I did not have the required skill to decipher the emotions held there.
As we conversed, the canoe bobbed down the dark river until the distance we’d traveled beyond our forest town surpassed ten miles. The route to our destination, the Stiss Ruins, was close to twenty miles, so if nothing else delayed us, we should arrive in another thirty minutes. Before leaving, I drank plenty of water and ate, too, but now that I looked at it, my TP bar was nearly down to half. But as long as we were in the boat, I didn’t need to worry about running out of water. I pulled a clay cup out of my inventory and scooped it into the river, then took turns with Alice drinking. I was a bit nervous sourcing in the dark, when I couldn’t actually see how clear the water was, but it didn’t taste bad, and Kuro drank from it, too, so I figured I wouldn’t get sick from it. The river was getting wider and wider, but the sheer cliffs on either side continued endlessly. The repetitive nature of the landscape was making me sleepy. But it seemed like that moment of nodding off was exactly when monsters that looked like dragonfly nymphs and pond snails chose to leap into the canoe and start fighting, so I didn’t end up sleep-steering us into any accidents. I kept the map open the whole time. All around us was the gray color that indicated undiscovered terrain, except for one thin line of blue for the river. My Ship Handling skill had risen to 5 already, which was making me wonder if I should change my class to sailor. Then Alice said, “Kirito…do you hear something?” and Kuro lifted its long tail and growled, staring forward. Enemies? Is there a field boss up ahead? I watched and listened, my hackles raised. There seemed to be a faint but deep sound in the distance. Something like an enormous beast roaring—except the sound wasn’t changing. It was just a constant roar. And getting steadily louder. “Kirito, stop the boat!” Alice shouted, and then I understood. It wasn’t easy to see by the light of the torch and moon, but the surface of the river up ahead was simply gone. “…W-waterfall!” I shouted and pushed the oar backward as far as I could. But
a dugout canoe moving at full speed was difficult to slow down. The sound was already deafening, drowning out our voices. Then a floating sensation came over my body. In fact, I was floating. The canoe had gone over the top of the falls, and I was flying through the air. “Waaaaaah!!” “Eeeeeeek!!” Our screams were matched only by the sound of Kuro yowling, “Arooooo!”
4 “Well, it’s a river. There are going to be falls,” I commented, water dripping from every part of my body. Alice muttered lifelessly, “I wish you had thought about that five minutes earlier.” “Hey, even if we knew it was coming, there are cliffs on either side, so our only options would have been to jump over the edge or try to paddle all the way upstream…” “If we had looked, there might have been a place to climb.” Kuro added, “Grau!” in agreement, then shook violently to spray off the excess water. Most of the droplets struck me, but all that did was take me from soaking to drenched, which wasn’t much of a distinction. “…Anyway, at least it didn’t turn into a total disaster. Nobody drowned, and the boat capsized, but it didn’t get wrecked.” “Both of those things are miracles—that was a fall of thirty mels. You should thank Stacia we are still alive.” “Okay…” The truth was, that would be hard to do. To me, the Underworld’s Goddess of Creation, Stacia, was none other than Asuna. In her head, Alice managed to hold on to separate concepts of the Stacia she’d always believed in and SuperAccount 01 Stacia. But whenever I closed my eyes and thought of Stacia, the face that popped into my mind was Asuna’s. At any rate, I said a silent prayer to Asuna-Stacia, then examined the situation. After going over the falls, Alice, Kuro, and I drifted a few hundred yards down
the river, clinging to the overturned boat, until we finally managed to get up onto the shore. Downstream from the falls, the sides of the river were proper banks again, but if it had stayed cliffs, we might have washed all the way to the mouth of the river. Assuming there was sea somewhere near all this land. The silver lining was that the place where we washed up on the shore was not that far from where we initially meant to disembark. Our destination, the Stiss Ruins, was still about three miles away from this spot, it seemed. Under the light of the moon, the terrain ahead was flat grassland that reminded me of the space around the Town of Beginnings on the first floor of Aincrad. If we sprinted, we could get there in fifteen minutes. That put the expected arrival time at eight forty-five PM. My initial plan was to get there by nine, or nine thirty at the latest, so the canoe had saved us a good amount of time. With some difficulty, Alice and I turned the boat back over and anchored it on the riverside behind us. It wouldn’t go into my inventory, so we had to leave it here. I’d hoped to take it back the way we came, but the waterfall made that impossible. Alice must have been thinking the same thing, because she glanced back and said, “If needed, we’ll just have to tear it down for the materials again.” “That’s true…though I’m guessing we won’t get the Zelle teak wood back.” “Because it was carved out of the log. I can cut another one, if needed. That’s why we marked the map.” But I knew that she didn’t really want to break it down. We didn’t name the canoe like we did the Tilnel, but a boat was always something more than a simple item. “We’ll think about a better way to deal with it. But for now…let’s get going,” I said. Our equipment had dried in the meantime, so Alice and I set off. The rabbit and snail monsters that appeared in the grassland were noticeably weaker than the ones in the forest. They could each be defeated with a single sword skill, more or less, but they gave almost no experience, and the dropped items were uninspiring. But every mountain starts as a molehill, as they say, and during our run, each
of us gained a level: level-17 for me, level-16 for Alice, and level-6 for Kuro. That put my stock of ability points at six, so I decided to open my menu and spend one. For the moment, I’d raised Brawn to rank-8, and its advanced ability Bonebreaker to rank-1. As a second-tier ability, Bonebreaker needed two points for a single rank, so I decided to just go ahead and bump Brawn to rank-10. I was about to hit the button to accept but paused to check on Alice first. “What abilities did you take again?” “I have Brawn at rank-10, Bonebreaker at rank-1, Assault at rank-1, and Ironbreaker at rank-2.” “I-Ironbreaker?” I repeated. That name didn’t sound familiar to me, but then I realized why. “W-wait…is that a tier-4 ability? And you gave it two levels? You spent eight points on it?!” In contrast to my shock, Alice’s response was quite matter-of-fact. “I liked the effect.” “Wh-what effect is that?” “Increased damage to enemy armor when attacking. After all, an Integrity Knight’s sword is meant to break through any shield or armor with a single swing.” “…Ah, good point…” In the Cloudtop Garden on the eightieth floor of Central Cathedral, I’d exchanged blows with Alice Synthesis Thirty. I remembered thinking that if I threw a combo of sword skills at her, I’d have a chance of victory, but Alice’s Osmanthus Blade was so powerful I couldn’t even block it, and she had me trapped against the wall in no time. The gamer in me wanted to say that taking higher abilities at a low overall level was an inefficient use of resources, but that wasn’t my business to say, really. Unital Ring wasn’t just a game, but it was still something you played. The best way to build your character was by following that voice inside you. “Well, I’ll know who to turn to when we face a heavily armored foe.”
“And I’ll allow you to take care of the slimes and worms. I am tired of slippery, squirmy things for now.” “You got it,” I said, wondering just how many four-eyed giant flatworms she’d killed. I pressed the ACCEPT button on my Brawn purchase. We didn’t run across any monsters worth mentioning after that, but we did end up taking a few detours for unexpected reasons. The closer we got to our destination, the more we started to see groups of players leveling-up with torches in hand. If we came running up on them in the darkness, they could very well mistake us for PKers. We put out the torch and headed southwest, wary of running into others. Our destination came into view just as we crested a small hill. It was a gigantic walled city that loomed over the flat plains like a small mountain. There were several concentric walls that curved gently, forming a shape like an upside-down top. The moonlit city seemed to be about two-thirds of a mile across and six hundred feet tall. In scale alone, it was larger than the Town of Beginnings. But upon closer examination, the walls were collapsed in places, and there were almost no lights to be seen. There was a faint orange haze over the center, but overall it looked more like a dungeon than a town. “…So those are the Stiss Ruins,” said Alice from the top of the hill. She lifted the edge of her hood. “That wall doesn’t look like a natural collapse. It’s as though there was a great battle there.” “Now that you mention it, yeah…There’s that huge hole in the middle, too. Those walls look like they’re six feet thick. You’d need a cannon to do that kind of damage, right?” “Perhaps that’s what it was. Or an equivalent kind of sacred art…I mean, magic.” If this world had flintlock muskets, then perhaps they had equivalent cannons, like smoothbore muzzleloaders. Could some army in the distant past have lined up their artillery on the plain and bombarded the city? Or was Alice right, and it was some kind of powerful magic…?
“So…where in the ruins are we meeting her?” “Oh, right,” I said, recalling the actual reason we’d come all this way. My eyes rolled over the right side of the city. “Ummm…underneath a large willow tree five hundred yards directly north of the ruins at nine o’clock.” “Then you only have five minutes left.” “If we were gonna be late, I’d send her a message in real life, but I think we’ll get there just in time. Kuro, you hungry?” I had no idea how much of my speech the panther, sitting politely to the side, understood, but it yowled “Gau!” and stood up. I figured that finding the actual tree in question would be tough in the dark, but after eyeing the proper direction and running south-southwest, I soon spotted a silhouette that seemed to fit the bill. Even in the dark, it was hard to mistake those long, dangling willow branches. It seemed like the perfect place for some astral-type monsters to appear, but I trusted that Argo wouldn’t pick a haunted location as a meetup spot. As we approached the gnarled old tree, I called out, “Hey, Argo, are you there?” at what I thought was a reasonably quiet volume. “Kirito!” Alice immediately shouted. “Grurrrr!” growled Kuro. And lastly, an eerie voice called out, “Byohhhh!” I grabbed my sword hilt on instinct and scanned our surroundings. There was what looked like a broken gravestone at the foot of the huge willow—and some kind of fuzzy light. No sooner had I seen it than a pale shape slipped straight up out of the ground. It wore a tattered, old-fashioned dress and had long hair that covered its face and extended arms like dead branches. Every part of it was translucent. “There is a ghost!!” I shouted, drawing my sword. Alice readied her bastard sword, and Kuro entered its leaping stance. “Byohhhh!” the ghost roared again, cold, pale light issuing from the eyes behind those hanging bangs. It had targeted only me so far, but there was
already a red spindle cursor over its head. The name below its HP bar was Vengeful Wraith. English, huh? I noticed. The names of all the other monsters we’d encountered were descriptive Japanese. The only other exception to this pattern was the fire-breathing frog in the giant wall, the Goliath Rana. If there was a rule that all boss-type monsters had their names in English, then I couldn’t take this spirit lightly. It was the wraith that ended our staredown. “Byohhh!” it wailed, sliding to the side in the air before charging me. A hand with long, sharp nails swiped at my neck. I reacted swiftly, lifting my sword and jumping backward. I chose to put distance between us, just because I wasn’t sure if I could block its attack. That premonition was immediately proven correct, because the wraith’s hand hit my sword, slowed briefly, then proceeded straight through it with a smokelike effect. “Whoa…!” I lurched backward in midair. The sharp claws missed just an inch from my throat, leaving five pale lines that hung in the air. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I delivered a counterthrust. The tip of my fine iron longsword caught the wraith’s side, but this, too, produced the same puff of smoke effect and had no physical feedback. A few pixels fell off its HP bar, nothing more. “Alice, physical attacks do almost nothing to it!” I warned, backing away again. “That’s how ghosts work!” she replied. Ghosts didn’t exist in the Underworld—though I once encountered something like a living spirit—so she must have learned that from ALO. Hopefully, it wasn’t from real-world experience… Either way, there were two general methods for dealing with astral-type enemies that physical attacks didn’t harm. Either you used attack spells, like fire
or light magic, or you used a weapon that had been enchanted somehow. Neither was an option here. I was certain that the Holy Sword, Excalibur, could banish this ghost in a single hit, but it was back at the cabin, and I couldn’t even lift it with my current stats. “Byohhhh…” The wraith’s torn mouth hung open in a mocking smile. But that image gave me an idea. What happened to the person we were meeting at this willow tree, Argo the Rat? She was nowhere to be seen. Argo was speedy, but she wouldn’t stand a chance against this nasty wraith as a freshly converted level-1 character. Had Argo already died before we’d gotten here? Had she been forever banished from the world of Unital Ring? My worst fears caused me to freeze for a moment, and the wraith did not miss its chance. “Byoaaa!” It sank down into the ground up to its waist, then lunged from that height. I reacted late but managed to cross its left arm with my sword; however, the upward claw swipe coming from the ground passed through my blade and gauntlet, gouging my forearm deeply. I felt a numbing shock and an intense chill. More than 10 percent of my HP bar dropped, and a Debuff icon that resembled an ice crystal appeared. It was the sign for continuous freezing damage, the effect that happened to us during the ice storm on the savanna. “Dammit!” I swore. Alice grabbed my shoulder and yanked me backward so she could take my place. “Yaaaa!” she cried, her bastard sword shining in her hands. It was a brilliant, heavy horizontal slash that reminded me of her old Integrity Knight days. The bastard sword, which was two or three inches longer than mine, caught the wraith’s torso, but it only split it like smoke and did hardly any damage.
Next, Kuro leaped on the wraith, digging its huge fangs into the creature’s shoulder. The bodily attack had more of an effect than the iron swords, taking away 3 percent or so of its HP, but the wraith wasn’t going to go down without a fight. “Byohhh!” it howled with rage, jabbing both sets of nails into Kuro’s back. “Gyipe!” the panther yelped, red damage effects spilling as it jumped away. It lost over 10 percent, too, and suffered the same freezing Debuff. I tried to ignore the bone-chilling sensation as I rushed over and wrapped my left arm over Kuro’s arched back. I didn’t think of myself as a real beast-tamer, and my successful beast-taming yesterday had been a true stroke of luck, but the thought of losing my brand-new pet after just a day terrified me so much that my legs quaked. We didn’t stand a chance at this rate. Should we retreat for now? Was it even possible to get away from a foe that moved so quickly through the air? And for that matter, was it right for such a dangerous enemy to be located just five hundred yards from the starting spawn point? We were frontline fighters at level-16 and level-17 with a combat-focused pet, and we were fighting for our lives. Any brand-new characters just out of the town would have no chance. What was the point of placing this wraith here…? I was torn, unable to decide whether to keep fighting or give up, when I heard a voice from behind me: “Kiri-boy! It’s weak against fire!” Something shiny came flying toward me. It was a ring of fire—no, a spinning torch. I barely managed to catch the spark-spraying projectile with my free hand. “Alice, I need five seconds!” I shouted. “I’ll give you ten!” came her bold response. I dropped my sword and opened my menu as fast as I could. In my inventory, there was a single bottle of linseed oil left. I brought it out, popped the cork with my thumb, and poured the contents onto my sword. Once the oil coated
both sides of the blade, I tossed the bottle away and stood back up. Alice had just brushed off the wraith with her bastard sword. It had barely lost any HP, as usual, but the swing did actually knock the wraith back a bit, rather than simply passing through it. Upon a closer look, I noticed that Alice was holding her sword upright and bashing the base of the flat side inside of slicing. Very interesting, I thought, then gave the command. “Alice, switch!” The knight promptly jumped out of the way as I held the torch up toward my sword. With a fwoom, the oil caught fire, covering the blade with glowing red flames. It was the quickest and easiest way to give my sword a fire aspect, but the effective time would be much shorter than a magical enchantment, and if I swung it too wildly, I could blow out the fire. “Byuueee!” groaned the vengeful wraith, raising its hands and backing away from the torch and flaming sword. But this was my chance. Don’t go out! I urged my weapon, holding up the improvisational fire sword. The red of the flame and the yellow-green of my skill effect mingled. “Hah!” I jumped with a cry. Sonic Leap kicked in, and I shot through the darkness, slashing as I went. “Byohhh!!” The wraith thrust out its right hand. A complex sigil appeared, and shining needles shot forth from its five fingers. A magical attack…but if I tried to switch to defense, it would cause the sword skill to fumble. Trusting in Lisbeth’s armor to do its job, I ignored the needles and continued the charge. “Raaah!” I could feel three needles hit my body in different places as I swung the sword. My flaming weapon withstood the boosted speed of Sonic Leap and sliced through the ghostly body from its left shoulder to its right flank. “Byaaaaah!” screeched the wraith, pulling back. Its HP bar plunged downward. All of its hardy stubbornness was a thing of the past, as it instantly went below halfway to 40 percent…30…and stopped at 25.
White smoke issued from the place where I’d severed the wraith’s upper half in two, connecting the parts back together like glue. I wanted to deliver the finisher, but my sword’s flame was guttering, and I couldn’t move yet after using the sword skill. That was when someone grabbed the torch from my left hand and stuck it into the closing gap in the wraith’s midriff. Immediately after that, the two halves closed for good. But the torch stuck in between them was still aflame and growing larger as it burned away at the wraith’s insides. “Byohhhhhhhh!” screamed the spectral foe, writhing in agony, until even its screech turned to flame. Fire burst from its eyes. The HP bar continued to drop, and this time went to zero. The white astral substance and red flames created a marbling effect as they swelled into an explosion that shook the ground beneath my feet. There was no way some random nobody monster would have a death effect that spectacular. For one last instant, I thought, So why did they put a freakin’ boss here?! and then it was gone from my mind. There was a small blue light in the spot where the wraith had exploded. It slowly began to rise, approaching the branches of the willow tree. “W-wait!” I called out, scrambling frantically up the tree’s gnarled trunk. Once I’d reached the part where it split in two, I leaned back and jumped as hard as I could. My outstretched fingers just barely brushed the blue light. It expanded and burst like a bubble, and I did a double backflip before landing on the ground. With a sigh of relief, I turned to the player who’d finished off the vengeful wraith with that torch stunt. Simple sandy-brown leather armor. Small dagger on the left hip. Short, unruly hair the color of straw. Big light-brown eyes. “Hey, Ar—” I had to stop myself mid-sentence. The small avatar’s feet were enveloped by glowing blue rings of light—the sign of a level-up. Three rings, four, five, six…At last, they stopped appearing after seven.
“Welp, thank ya for the assist up ta level-8. Didn’t expect to get that much.” “Well, sure you did. It was a maneuver worthy of that kind of reward…but that’s not what I wanted to say.” I glanced back to see that Alice and Kuro were all right before I continued, “Argo, why did you tell us to meet in such a dangerous spot? You had me thinking that wraith killed you.” “I assumed it was a trap meant to kill us,” Alice declared as she walked closer. Argo grimaced. “Well, I suppose I can’t blame ya for bein’ suspicious,” she said, hopping forward so she could look up at Alice, who was half a head taller than her. At last, I realized that Argo’s avatar was noticeably younger than her real-life appearance. Somehow, it felt more familiar to me than strange or off-putting. After all, it was the exact same avatar Argo had in SAO. But yesterday, she’d said… “Wait, didn’t you say that you never copied your SAO character data over to ALO?” “Yep, I did say that. I made an entirely new character from scratch to meet up with Chrysheight. I coulda taken that account here…but if I was gonna go on adventures with you and A-chan, I figured this look was best.” “Meaning…you moved your SAO character to ALO for the first time today and logged in here with it…? Which fairy race did you select?” I asked, examining her head and skin in detail. “Don’t stare at me so hard,” she complained, grimacing. “I didn’t get a chance to select a race. I tried to go into ALO, and it just shot me straight here. I woke up dressed like this.” “Ohhh…so I guess you’re just human. Or at least, human by Aincrad terms…I gotta imagine Ymir is in total chaos, having ALO ripped out of their control like this. I’m surprised it allowed you to move your data at all.” “That’s the thing,” she said. “I put my SAO ID and password into Ymir’s website, and as soon as I hit the button, they sent a new ID. No person was
handling that process manually.” “Huh…they used to do it that way before. I guess they automated the process at some point,” I murmured, surprised. I shrugged, figuring it wasn’t that important. “Anyway, you didn’t answer my initial question.” “Ah, the reason I chose this spot ta meet up?” Argo said, glancing at the huge willow tree. She made a face. “I guess I didn’t do my homework for once. One of those UR wikis folks are workin’ on had a map of this area uploaded, and there was a willow tree marked on it, along with a helpful caption like safe here, no monsters appear.” “Huh?! How was that safe…?! Any low-level player wouldn’t stand a chance!” I protested. Alice nodded, and even Kuro growled in agreement. Argo eyed Kuro and said, “That’s a cool panther ya got there. Whose pet is it?” “It’s mine. For being the Rat, how is it that you’re afraid of dogs but fine with cats?” “I’m surprised ya remember. Just so ya know, dogs hunt rats, too. There’s literally a breed called rat terrier.” “Oh, wow…but who cares about that? I’m talking about the wraith! Was that strategy wiki you checked just wrong about it?” “Doesn’t seem like it to me. Check it out.” Argo opened her ring menu and switched to the quest window. There were three quests there already. Their titles were Protecting Rabbits (Rec. Level-1), Lost Item in the Sewer (Rec. Level-3), and The Ancient Spirit’s Curse (Rec. Level20). “Wait, is that it?! That wraith was a quest boss?!” “Seems like it. It won’t show up unless you’ve got the quest and ya meet the requirements.” “But neither Kirito nor I have taken this quest,” pointed out Alice. I nodded. Just in case, I checked my own quest list. It was empty. We looked at Argo. The info dealer seemed apologetic. “I’m guessin’ it was
just a combined coincidence.” “Huh…?” “I came by here about ten minutes before our meetin’ time of nine o’clock. That grave at the foot of the willow tree started glowing, and then…” She pointed at the mossy little grave marker, lit by the moon above. Nothing about it seemed wrong for now, but I seemed to recall that it’d had a pale glow of its own when we first arrived. “…All it did was light up, no monsters or anything, but I got a real bad feelin’ about it. I thought about lettin’ ya know and changing our spot, but I didn’t wanna just log out here, so I tried to go back to the ruins. Then I heard some horrible sounds behind me and turned back to see…this.” “Aha…so having the quest meant you activated the grave, and we must have fulfilled some requirement for the wraith to appear. What was the criteria?” “Apparently, it was that you had to have a silver item materialized on your person.” “Huh? Silver…?” I closed my window and checked the few items I had in my pockets and pouches. “…There’s nothing like that on me.” When I melted down my Blárkveld from ALO, I got a couple of fine silver ingots, but I gave them all to Lisbeth, and even if I still had them, I had no reason to hold them as physical items. “Oh…perhaps it is me,” said Alice, realizing something. She checked in the cloth pouch at her waist. Out of it, she pulled a small, clinking leather sack, inside of which was a small flat circle. She dropped the shining silver object onto my palm. “A silver coin…?” It was old and faded, but I had to assume it wasn’t aluminum or nickel. In size and thickness, it reminded me of a 100-yen coin. And in fact, on one side was the number 100, and on the other, a design of two trees. I tapped it, and the
properties window said 100-el Silver Coin, Currency, Weight: 0.1. “…A hundred el…You know, this is the first coin I’ve seen here…” Nearly all the monsters we’d killed so far were animal types, and they dropped materials like fangs and hides but no money. I looked up and returned the coin to Alice. “Where did you get this?” I asked. “Sinon gave it to me before we left Kirito Town. She said, ‘If there’s an NPC shop in the Stiss Ruins, buy me all the musket ammunition and gunpowder this money can buy.’” “Ahhh, I see…” We could recover our swords’ durability by sharpening them, but if Sinon ran out of musket rounds and gunpowder, that was it. The Orniths who gave her the gun also taught her how to make the ammo and powder, but she said that one of the materials could only be harvested deep in the Giyoru Savanna. Sinon’s gun was a valuable weapon in battle, so I’d hoped to help her get more bullets before she ran out, but if we could just buy some at a shop, that would be best. However… “Hmm, I don’t remember any spot that had bullets and gunpowder,” Argo said to my dismay. “Most of the place is an actual ruin, with monsters an’ all, but there’s a proper town right in the middle. Couple o’ NPC shops, too. But all they sell are simple tools and food. That and starter gear.” “Uh…food? Like what?” I asked, knowing that we’d need to recover our SP soon. Argo just shook her head. “Well, that’s one part o’ you that’s no different between the real world and virtual world.” Alice giggled. “It reminds me of the time when you pulled that steamed bun out of your pocket…Anyway, Kirito, would you introduce us?” “Huh…? Oh! Right, you haven’t met before.” I cleared my throat awkwardly, wondering how I should describe them to each other. It was not easy.
5 While we hadn’t counted on that extra fight, I nevertheless met up with Argo just as we planned on the train earlier in the day. My initial idea was to head straight back to the Great Zelletelio Forest. But Argo said that she wanted to go back into the Stiss Ruins. There were two reasons. One was to find out what happened with the Ancient Spirit’s Curse quest. The other was to infiltrate a group meetup of strategic-minded players that was supposed to take place at the center of the ruins at ten o’clock. “…Look, I’m intrigued, too…but is this little get-together open to outsiders, too?” I asked. We were walking toward the north gate of the Stiss Ruins. Argo curled her finger through her hair as she replied, “Oh, just fine. There should be close to a hundred folks there. Though we’ll probably wanna tweak our appearances a bit.” “True…this obviously isn’t starter gear, and it doesn’t look like it came over from ALO, either,” I said, looking down at the simple metal armor I was wearing. Then something occurred to me. “Actually, we can just take off the armor, but what about Kuro? It’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” On my right, Kuro padded along elegantly, a majestic beat easily over seven feet long from head to tip of the tail. I would assume that hardly any players had pets of their own, so a panther was bound to draw attention. “Ah, good point…There are a bunch of empty houses, so maybe you can leave it there to wait for us?” “I suppose that would be an option…”
While I was at school, Kuro played with the other tamed animals, patrolled the town, and took naps on its own, apparently. Over eight hours away from its owner didn’t undo the beast-taming effect, so I figured that thirty minutes or so apart should be fine, but I couldn’t help but be nervous about it, here in an unfamiliar territory, with plenty of other players wandering around. “In that case, I will stay with Kuro,” Alice announced from my left. I turned to her. “Are you sure?” “I do not enjoy being in the midst of crowds. In return, you can handle Sinon’s shopping request for me,” she said, holding out the leather sack and coin. I stuck them in the pouch I had on my belt. “Sure, of course I can do that…but I feel like we’re not going to find any bullets or gunpowder.” “If it’s not there, it’s not there. Just do not embezzle that money and spend it on food.” “I’m not a child,” I argued. Argo snickered to herself. I put all my metal armor back into storage and donned a cloak of rough linen over my clothes instead. That made me look like a low-level player who’d lost his cool inherited gear after the grace period ended. Alice had been wearing her hooded cloak all along anyway, so she didn’t look much different with her armor off. We kept our swords equipped because it was too nerve-racking without them, but the cloaks kept them mostly hidden anyway. “Awww, man, I want one of those hooded cloaks, too. Just doesn’t feel right ta have my face out in the open all the time,” Argo complained as we approached the north gate of the Stiss Ruins. The ground around us was packed and hard. There were almost no plants. “You should’ve mentioned it earlier. We could make fabric like this in a place with lots of grass to pick loose.” “Really? That’s made outta grass?” “Not just any kind of grass, though.” “Then gimme that one.”
“N-no!” I protested. Alice opened her ring menu. “I’m sure I have some fabric left over. I can make you a hooded cloak of your own.” “Really? You sure, Alicchi?” “C’mon, don’t give her that lazy nickname.” “Hee-hee, I don’t mind. It is fun to have a special nickname,” said Alice magnanimously. She went to her Tailoring crafting menu and hit a few buttons, and just like that, a gray hooded cloak appeared over her floating window. “Wow, with the tap of a button, huh? Nice and easy,” said Argo, impressed. “It’s only simple items like this one that can be made from the menu,” Alice warned, handing her the cloak. “This is for you, Argo.” “Thanks, Alicchi. I won’t forget this favor I owe ya,” Argo finished, then dropped the cloak over the leather armor she must have brought over from ALO. When the hood was up, she looked just like the old Rat from SAO—except that her cheeks were missing those three drawn-on whiskers. I was just thinking about how I’d hold her down and draw them on if I only had a permanent marker when she promptly glared at me. “Kiri-boy, ya shouldn’t stare at a lady like that.” “S-sorry,” I mumbled and faced forward. Up close, the Stiss Ruins were larger than I’d ever imagined. The outer walls alone had to be a hundred feet tall. Each stone block that made up the structure was over three feet to a side, but I couldn’t begin to guess how they’d stacked them in the first place—or how they’d been destroyed. The decorations on the gate were ornate and suggested that, before its destruction, this city must have been as beautiful as it was massive. But now there were no civilians or merchants passing through the gate. To my surprise, I didn’t see any players, either. At least five thousand players must have been converted into Unital Ring from ALO, and nearly all of them had to still be active around the ruins. It was after nine o’clock at night, which was prime time for VRMMO players. I would have expected to see players going
out to hunt in the wilderness and returning to refuel on supplies. When I brought this up, Argo had a very simple answer. “Oh, that’s because the north gate ain’t so popular.” “Huh? Popular?” “According to that same wiki, at least. The pathways are too complex, so it doesn’t offer easy access to the city center, plus the mobs don’t show up very much north of the ruins. That’s why I chose it as our meetup point, actually.” “Aha…but even still, not a single person…?” “Listen, Kiri-boy. Not every ALO player—or player from any other Seed game —is still playin’ this thing. In my mind, it’s less than half…maybe a third. Everyone else is just bidin’ their time, waiting for this situation to resolve itself. That includes the fairy leaders in ALO.” “……” Now that she said it, that did seem like the more practical response. The UR incident was just that—an incident. Given that players were paying a monthly fee to the various companies running their VRMMOs, it was practically criminal in nature. Only someone truly addicted to online gaming could be optimistic or egotistic enough to actually follow the announcement about the “land revealed by the heavenly light” when you didn’t know if it was true or not. Meaning that the people we were attempting to infiltrate were the ones with that mindset. People like Mocri and Schulz. People who took things too seriously. At some point, I had stopped walking, and I looked up to see that Alice, Argo, and Kuro were farther ahead, waiting for me. “Oh…sorry,” I murmured, picking up the pace. After passing through the half-collapsed gate, I felt like my body temperature dropped. The wide stone path lasted for only a few dozen yards before hitting another wall and splitting left and right. “There was a useful empty house around here, I think,” Argo said, taking the lead. We followed her without complaint.
The homes inside the Stiss Ruins were built as if stuck to the inside of the many layers of castle walls. It was a terrible way to get sunlight, if you asked me, but that couldn’t have been the reason the city fell into ruin. The buildings were grand stone apartments that seemed reminiscent of some of the great, ancient cities of Europe, but nearly all of them were falling apart, just like the walls. We rushed past them because it appeared that insect and vermin monsters had taken up residence in most of them. The home Argo led us to had a huge hole in the ceiling, but its front door and inside stairs were intact, leaving one room on the second floor that was usable. Argo and I left Alice and Kuro there, then headed to the center of the ruins. The complex series of right and left turns through the streets left me totally disoriented, but Argo must have had some kind of special sense for these things, because she kept us moving without a second thought. After we’d walked for what felt like a third of a mile, a waterway appeared. It served as a boundary line of a kind; as soon as we timidly crossed the crumbling bridge, the area immediately looked different. Here, there were cast-iron torch holders at regular intervals, their flames flickering and orange. Farther beyond them, little roadside shops appeared here and there, and more NPCs and players came into view. Unlike in SAO, in Unital Ring you couldn’t call up a target cursor just by staring at someone, but the NPCs all had deathly pale skin and wore Roman-style tunics, so it was easy to tell them apart. All the shops sold low-quality materials, and there were no bullets or ammunition. “The Bashin looked so hale and hearty, but all the NPCs here are really pale…,” I murmured. Argo shrugged. “I mean, I get it. Yer bound to get pale, livin’ in a place like this.” “Honestly, they seem like a different race altogether. What race are the NPCs here?” “Dunno…It’s almost impossible to tell what any of the NPCs are sayin’. Talk to ’em, and you’ll see. The only exceptions are the shopkeepers.”
“Ahhh, I see…” That was the same as the Bashin and Patter, then. According to Sinon, the NPCs you could speak to would teach you some vocabulary words, and repeating the pronunciation enough would help you learn those language skills. It would be nice to eventually command all the different tribal languages, but how much time would that take? I was considering this thought when the street stalls began to transition into small interior shops: items, medicines, and weapons. “Do you mind if we go into that weapons shop?” I asked. “Already looked in there. No bullets, no powder, and of course, no guns.” “…No surprise, either.” That meant we’d have to go to the Giyoru Savanna to get the ingredients for gunpowder. Here, the little commercial district ended after about fifty yards, as a magnificent arch came into view. After passing through it, we came to the center of the Stiss Ruins. The circular space was surrounded by large buildings such as castle manors and churches, with a massive stone structure like the Colosseum of Rome in the center. Numerous arches lined its outer wall, which was half-collapsed like all the rest of the ruins, but we could sense the presence of many people inside it. “…Is that the place for this so-called friendly meetup?” “That’s it,” Argo confirmed. She leaned closer to my ear and whispered, “Listen, if anyone asks ya what team you’re with, just say Announcer Fan Club. That’s the loosest group of ’em all, and they barely keep track of membership, so it’s the least likely ta get us exposed.” “Aha…And just so I’m clear, the announcer in question is the voice that spoke to everyone on the first day when the grace period ended, right? The ‘all shall be given’ person?” “Well, I didn’t hear it.” “Oh, right…”
But that was the only time a voice like a system announcement had shown itself in Unital Ring, so that had to be the reference. It was a very alluring voice, I had to admit. Still… “These guys gotta be down bad if they’re making a fan club for a voice. We don’t even know if the voice belongs to a human or a god or a devil, or if it’s even in a humanoid shape or not.” “That’s probably what they like about it. If I had ta guess,” Argo said without any evidence. She started trekking toward the stadium, crossing the worn-down stones to the main gate. After walking through the darkened tunnel beyond it, we emerged not in the stands but in the arena itself. In the space, 160 feet across, there were nearly a hundred players hanging out, as Argo’s tip had said. Most of them had cloth gear, but I could see some leather armor and chain mail, too. Based on their designs, these were inherited gear from ALO, not freshly crafted. If these were the top players out of the converted ALO playerbase, none of them had reached the Iron Age yet. On the north end of the arena was a stone stage with many decorative fires atop it. Whoever had set this up was probably going to show up there. Argo and I took a spot on the far wall to wait for things to start. Fortunately, the other players were too busy exchanging information to pay much attention to us. “…Argo, you okay on SP and TP?” I asked, just in case. The info dealer’s head swung up and to the left. “Hmm. I’ve still got water from that well, but I’m not so sure about my food stock.” “Here.” I took out two pieces of bison jerky and gave one to her. “Aw, thanks,” she said, accepting it, but she did not put it in her mouth. “Even with you, though, I don’t feel good about takin’ something for free.” “Well, get used to it. You can’t be one of us if you get hung up on little things like who owes what. You can easily die of hunger and thirst in this place…so water and food are like shared resources, in my opinion.”
“‘One of us,’ huh? Heh…the phrase makes my ears feel all prickly,” she said, which I took to be a combination of prickly and ticklish. On that mysterious note, Argo went ahead and bit into the jerky, and I joined her. The flavor of the bison meat I’d harvested from the Giyoru Savanna was similar enough to beef. It wasn’t as gamy as the thornspike cave bear, and it was easier to eat. Argo was apparently much hungrier than she let on, because she finished her jerky in no time. Then she pulled something that looked like a long, narrow fruit out of her waist sack. She twisted off the cylindrical stem, then lifted it to her lips. There was some kind of liquid inside—water? “Wh-what is that?” I asked once she’d finished drinking. Argo stuck the stem back on to cap it and replied, “There’s a well a bit to the south of this center square, and there’s a tree growin’ next to it. The NPC who manages the well gives one fruit to each player, which you can use as a canteen…Doesn’t hold a lot, though.” “Huh! Well…it’s true that even getting containers for water isn’t easy,” I remarked, impressed. I materialized the ceramic water jug Asuna had made and drank some water from it. The jug held three times as much as that fruit, but it was heavy and fragile, so I couldn’t just leave it within arm’s reach on my person. I wanted to get a leather skin that was lighter and tougher, but there were too many higher priorities at the moment. In the meanwhile, it was approaching ten o’clock, and murmurs arose at the front of the crowd. I glanced up and saw four people climbing the steps on the right of the stage. The first was a tall man with studded armor and a one-handed sword. The second bore scale armor and a scimitar. The third had cloth armor but a huge two-handed sword on his back, while the fourth was slender, with a white hood…a woman, perhaps. They were almost 150 feet away, so I couldn’t make out the details of their faces. “Hey, let’s go up closer,” I whispered to Argo and started to lean off the wall, but she held me back. “All we need is to hear their voices. Don’t do anything to make yerself more visible.”
“………Yes, ma’am.” When an info dealer with expertise in infiltration gave you advice like that, you followed it. I trained my ears on the speakers, intending to catch every word. “Hey, guys, we’re gonna get started!” said the first man to take the stage, the one in the studded armor. His voice was loud and clear. “I’m the person who set this informal event up. I’m Holgar, and I run a group called the Absolute Survivor Squad! Many, many thanks to you all for coming together!” I didn’t recognize his name, but I felt a wave of familiar nostalgia, and I recognized the source at once. In the town of Tolbana on the north side of the first floor of Aincrad, there was a similar circular stage, if much smaller than this one, and that was where the very first boss strategy meeting had been held. A swordsman named Diavel had led the way, and he’d introduced himself with a loud and cheerful style. My name’s Diavel, and I like to think of myself as playing a knight! Someone in the crowd had yelled back, I bet you wish you could say you’re playing a hero! and gotten a laugh from the audience. One simple comment from Diavel had helped to warm up the crowd, and I keenly remember feeling his charisma in that moment. And now that I thought about it, Argo had first come to me as a proxy for him. She had said that he wanted to buy my Anneal Blade +6. He ultimately offered close to 30,000 col, a massive sum, but I refused all the offers. Sometimes I thought back on that event. If I had gone through with selling my sword, would Diavel not have taken such a huge risk trying to get the Last Attack bonus on the floor boss and not have died as a result…? I brushed aside that momentary bit of sentiment and listened to Holgar continue. “Let me introduce these other nice guys who helped set up this gathering! First of all, the leader of the Weed Eaters, Dikkos!” The man with the scimitar raised his hands, and a cheer arose.
“Next, the leader of the Announcer Fan Club, Tsuburo!” Applause for the greatsword-user was more reserved, but the voices and cheers were deeper and manlier. “Lastly, the leader of the Virtual Study Society, Mutasina!” A rustle ran through the crowd as a collective Who? But that confusion lasted only until Mutasina pulled back her hood, exposing long black hair and purewhite skin. Even from this distance, I could tell from her air and the reaction that she was a considerable beauty. Over 90 percent of the gathering was male, and they erupted into the loudest cheers and whistles yet. Mutasina waved her hands cheerily, working them up into a frenzy. When the crowd calmed down, Holgar stepped forward again. “We’re going to be leading the discussion today! Unfortunately, they’re saying Team Fawkes got wiped out last night, so they’re not here!” Murmurs rippled through the arena. I hadn’t heard of that group. I looked toward Argo, but she just averted her eyes and said nothing. Voices from the crowd demanded an explanation, but the answer Holgar gave was unhelpful. “Unfortunately, I don’t know the details, either. Apparently, the people in Fawkes invited some others to leave the ruins with them last night, and it seems like they got into a group battle somewhere to the north and lost.” Some players closer to us discussed this news among themselves. “North, like, against the Bashin?” “Those guys are dangerous…There were people who challenged the Bashin during the grace period, when they still had their inherited gear to use and their best skills, and they all got their asses kicked.” “There’s no way Fawkes wouldn’t know about that. Why would they engage in such a dangerous gamble…?” As I eavesdropped on the conversation, a sense of foreboding came over me, but I pushed it down and ignored it, trying to focus on the stage. Holgar stepped
forward, the light of the flames reflecting off his armor’s studs. “At any rate!” he shouted. “All I can tell you for now is that Unital Ring isn’t going to be simple or easy! This is the third night since the incident started, and there still isn’t any sign of restoring the game, according to Ymir! So let’s reach the land revealed by the heavenly light, us ALO folks, and solve this thing from the inside!” Cheers of excitement and agreement issued from the crowd, filling the vast arena. My friends and I (including Argo) were technically part of the “ALO folks,” which made our goal the same as everyone else’s here. We weren’t trying to sneak ahead of anyone, like Mocri’s group on the first day, and if we had the chance to cooperate with others, we ought to do so. The reason we’d built a town in the forest was so that the ALO players leaving here would view us as the first checkpoint on their way—as long as we could protect against a third attack. And yet… I waited for Holgar’s next statement, unable to dispel the sense of foreboding, even as I kept it in check. When the fervor died down, the tall swordsman returned to his previous light and amicable tone. “The intent of tonight’s friendly meeting is to deepen the ties and information sharing between our four teams, who have decided to play cooperatively! We’ve got food and drink, too, so charge up your TP and SP all you like! As long as you like rabbit meat and the local grasses and fruit!” There was another cheer from the crowd. A number of wooden wagons, which had clearly been built with the Carpentry skill, rolled out of the tunnels on either side of the stage. The ingredients that Holgar humbly disparaged had been properly cooked, though, and the large pots and dishes steamed with fragrant, alluring seasonings. “…Where are they getting those spices?” I asked. “They’re selling ’em at the markets outside,” Argo replied. I made a mental note to buy some before we left. The only cash I was carrying came from Sinon,
but I was sure I could get enough to buy spices by selling off some of the materials in my inventory. While I was very curious about the food, sneaking free grub while I was supposed to be infiltrating a meeting was the very height of poor manners. For now, I’d seen the general attitude and capabilities of the converted ALO players who were taking the game seriously. That was enough of a reward. “Sure ya don’t wanna eat before we go?” Argo smirked. I gave her a stern look. “I’m not interested in giving you evidence for your ‘Kirito is a glutton in the virtual world’ theory. C’mon, let’s get outta here while they’re carrying on.” “Got it. We can stock up on food at the stalls, anyhow. I bet Alicchi and Kurocchi are starving right about now.” “Yeah, let’s do that,” I said, severing my longing for the dishes and turning back toward the tunnel we’d come through. But just then, bluish-purple light lit the stones at my feet. “Wha—?!” “What’s that?!” Argo and I turned back in alarm. But none of the hundred heard us—they were screaming on their own. This was not a predetermined part of the night’s events. I stood up on my toes and watched the ground carefully. It was not the stones themselves that were glowing but a complicated texture floating over the stone itself. It consisted of many rings, patterns, and symbols, just like… “A magic circle…?” I murmured, following the lines with my eyes to the middle of the arena. There was a huge crest there, shining brighter than the rest of it—the center of the circle. There was a 150-foot magic circle completely filling the circular arena, in other words. In ALO, this would be considered a major spell, above the category of regular magic. Or perhaps even beyond that, a grand spell. The symbol in the center abruptly began to move on its own. It wriggled,
rippled, and swirled. In moments, it grew to a pillar of light over thirty feet tall, then split apart and collapsed, forming a bizarre new silhouette. A narrow head covered in endless thorns. Long hair, tangled and tortured. Four arms with two joints each. The upper body of a skinny woman and a lower half of writhing feelers. It was a monster that could be described only as some dark, deviant god. It lifted its four arms high overhead and bellowed something in some inhuman language. Blue-black orbs grew from its open palms. Magic? What? Who? Why? Where? Questions burst through my mind like sparks. This was clearly some malicious act of magic. The best method of dealing with it would be to attack the caster and interrupt the spell, but identifying them in this crowd would be difficult. “Kiri-boy, we gotta go!” Argo shouted, and she began to run for the north exit. But my instincts told me she wouldn’t make it in time, so I grabbed the collar of her hood and held her back, drawing my sword. “Stay hidden!” I shouted, right as a huge number of light projectiles shot from the deviant god’s palms. They made a hideous greeeeee! squeal as they shot forth, each on its own complex trajectory. They struck players of all sorts—those still with shock, those in abject terror, and those who tried to evade. It was extremely high-level homing magic. Those who were hit didn’t drop immediately, but they were surely hit with some kind of Debuff or delayed damage effect. I had no desire to find out what those effects were myself. I held up my sword, tracking two shots that came my way. It was impossible to dodge them, and no armor would block them, either. But if the magic here worked on the same logic as in ALO, there was a way to deal with it: the special nonsystem skill I developed while playing in Alfheim, spell-blasting. Magic in ALO—accumulations of light fired from a spellcaster—had no physical form as a general rule, so it was impossible to block with sword or shield. But in the very center of the spell, there was a hurtbox no larger than a
pixel width, which, if struck by nonphysical damage, could shatter the spell… sometimes. For some reason, SAO’s sword skills existed in Unital Ring, but I hadn’t confirmed yet whether they held ALO’s elemental damage effects. For the moment, I just had to trust they would. Watching the light rounds hurtle down at me from an angle, I prepared to unleash the two-part sword skill Vertical Arc. But they did not follow simple parabolas; they wobbled and curved like knuckleballs. It would be nearly impossible to destroy both with a two-part sword skill. The better choice would be to give up on one and focus on destroying the other instead. With that split-second decision made, I switched to Sonic Leap, jumping toward one of the projectiles raining down on me. In ALO, this sword skill added wind damage to its physical effect. Trusting that it would do the same in Unital Ring, I aimed for the center of the light. “Grahhh!” I bellowed, slicing. It felt like crushing an extremely small but tough kernel. The blue-black spot of light split in midair like a viscous liquid. The other projectile, however, did a sharp turn in midair and struck the base of my neck. An extremely strange sensation, neither heat nor chill, gripped my throat. It was like being strangled by some transparent demon’s claw. I gritted my teeth and landed from my jump, then turned around. “Argo, you okay?!” I asked. She was backed away against the wall, staring at me with huge eyes. She squeaked, “I’m fine, Kiri-boy…but…you…” “We’ll talk later! Let’s get to a spot where we can escape at a moment’s notice! If the caster notices I spell-blasted that one, we’re in trouble!” “……Got it,” Argo replied. We crouched and rushed out of the way, stopping next to the exit tunnel so we could monitor the situation. At that moment, the menacing god looming over the center of the arena melted into the night. The magic circle on the ground contracted as it rotated,
then vanished. Between the toppled wagons and food littered over the ground, the players stood around in shock and horror. Eventually, someone said, “Hey, your neck…” At that, everyone observed below the chin of the nearest player, or they felt at their own necks. Without thinking, I looked at the neck of the man standing closest to me and saw something that looked like a black ring lodged around it —but that wasn’t right. It was a ring pattern, drawn directly on the skin. I tried to look down at my own chest, but I obviously couldn’t see my neck, and I didn’t have a mirror. When I glanced at Argo instead, she just nodded back at me nervously. Apparently, the ring was on my neck, too. But for now, I hadn’t lost any HP, MP, TP, or SP, and I didn’t feel any sensations with my avatar. What kind of Debuff was it? And how was it possible to use such a massive spell at this early point in the game? “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” someone yelled from the stage. Holgar, Dikkos, and Tsuburo had their swords drawn and pointed at Mutasina, the one woman of the group. “Mutasina, you told us you were gonna put on a huge Buff to pump up the crowd! This is obviously some kind of Debuff! That ain’t funny! Not even as a joke!” Holgar roared, but Mutasina was not intimidated in the least. She slumped against her long staff and replied with calm intensity. “It is not a joke, of course. All of this was planned.” “Planned…?! Then you accepted the offer to have this get-together just so you could cast this magic on all of us?!” “That’s what I told you. There’s no other reason I’d have chosen to take part in such a pointless gathering, is there?” That statement was met with howls of fury from here and there in the crowd. “Screw you! Take this stupid magic off us!” “You think you can beat a hundred of us together?!” Spurred on by their anger, Holgar took a step forward. “You heard them. Undo the Debuff. Or else we’ll solve this problem in a different way.”
Clearly, this “different way” meant killing the person who cast the spell. On Holgar’s cue, Dikkos and Tsuburo surrounded Mutasina from the sides. The people in the arena crowded closer to the stage. This put a thought into my head. Elsewhere in the arena should be other members of Mutasina’s group…the Virtual Study Society, was it? Had she placed that Debuff on them, too? Or did she get all of her fellow members to evacuate before she’d started the magic…? I wasn’t about to get the answer to that. Whatever effect this Debuff had, it was going to be impossible for her to avoid simultaneous attacks while surrounded like this. Mutasina probably expected to be killed here, quitting Unital Ring forever and leaving only this mystery unanswered. “…Fine, then. We’ll take matters into our own hands!” Holgar shouted, and he pulled back his sword. At the same time, Tsuburo’s two-handed sword and Dikkos’s scimitar began to glow with sword skills. Mutasina simply stood there, lifted her long staff with one hand—then slammed it down against the ground. The bottom tip made a high-pitched kraaack! Instantly, I was unable to breathe, and I fell to my knees. It was like something sticky had blocked my windpipe. I pressed my hands to my throat, desperately trying to breathe, but I couldn’t force air inward or outward. Through my sudden panic, I could see that the aggressors onstage, and nearly a hundred players around the arena, were all struggling on the ground in agony. There was a slight blue glow over the group, the dim light of all the rings shining at once. My neck was probably doing the same. On my HP bar, there was no ongoing damage, but I could see a Debuff icon on the right side that looked like hands wrapped around a throat. “Kiri-boy!” Argo leaped to my side and smacked me on the back, but it did not dislodge the sense of something blocking my throat. Ten seconds, twenty…I could feel the panic growing larger and darker within me. The sense of suffocation was truly real—I felt like my body in real life wasn’t breathing, either. But was that possible? If it was possible to stop a player’s respiration despite the many layers
of protection built into the AmuSphere, this was SAO all over again. I swung my right hand, trying to open my ring menu. The only way to escape this agony had to be logging out. After a few failed attempts, I finally got it open, and I looked for the system icon out of the eight in the ring. Then there was another loud kraaaack! Just like that, my airway was clear again. I was drowning in air, sucking it into my avatar’s lungs, with my hands pressed to the ground. Several seconds later, when I was finally emerging from my state of panic, Argo grabbed my shoulder and pulled me upright. “You all right, Kiri-boy?!” “Y…yeah, I’m okay,” I responded weakly. Before looking toward the stage again, I checked to confirm the Debuff icon was gone. Holgar, Dikkos, and Tsuburo were all frozen, hunched over on all fours. Standing regally above them, Mutasina reminded me a bit—just a tiny bit—of Administrator, who ruled over the human realm of the Underworld as the head of the Axiom Church. Despite having just stopped the breathing of a hundred, she was neither gloating nor afraid of what she’d done. Her only outward display was a pale smile. It took an iron will to do something like that. “Do you understand now?” she asked coolly, waving her left hand. “The spell I placed upon everyone here is called the Noose of the Accursed. You just experienced its effects for yourself…and once it has been successfully cast, its area of effect and length of time are infinite.” The other players in the arena murmured with horror. The words “No way…” escaped my throat. Infinite? Endless? So every time Mutasina hit the ground with the butt of her staff, every player here would be unable to breathe, no matter where in the world they were? The murmuring grew louder and louder until Mutasina lifted her staff, silencing them all. “But have no fear. I did not cast this magic upon you all to torment you. Just
like you, I want to beat this game…I’m simply following the most effective path to achieving that.” “…Most effective?” snarled Tsuburo boldly, getting unsteadily to his feet. “The most effective path is to threaten your fellow players with sadistic magic? There are other members of your Virtual Study Society here, aren’t there?” “Members…?” Mutasina repeated, then chuckled. “The reason you chose to meet in this place was because of a temporary alignment of goals, wasn’t it? Let me be clear: You might cooperate now, but the closer the goal becomes, the more our teams will compete with one another. In the end, even the players within a team will fight and kill one another. But as long as my magic is active upon you, we can avoid that situation. Do you see…? This is the best and most effective means of getting to the finish line, isn’t it?”
It almost sounded playful, coming from her lips. Tsuburo was at a loss for what to say. Instead, Dikkos spoke up from the seat of his pants. “Of course that ain’t true! We trust each other…me and Holgar and Tsuburo are in it together! If it turns into a race at the end, we’d never betray or kill each other! We’ll help each other out until the last moment, then line up to race the very last length and congratulate the winner…Isn’t that how VRMMOs work?!” “Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha.” Her slender shoulders shook with laughter. “Ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha…I’m sorry, it’s just…that’s so ridiculous. Trust? Congratulate? Do you really think those things happen here…in this virtual world?” Where her voice was lighthearted before, it suddenly turned as cold as though encased in ice. “Of course they don’t.” Her black eyes glared at the players in the arena. “In the virtual world…at least, in The Seed’s VRMMOs, things like trust, love, and salvation are nothing more than illusions. The only things that are real are hatred, betrayal, deceit, and despair. After all, the origin of all full-dive virtual worlds is Sword Art Online. A pure hell that took four thousand lives with it, kicking and screaming.” I had to grit my teeth to keep from shouting, What would you know?! A vast number of players had lost their lives in Aincrad. In terms of victims of a single person’s actions, it was undoubtedly one of the greatest atrocities ever committed in human history. But hatred and despair weren’t the only things that had existed in that world. If that were true, then I wouldn’t still be with Asuna, Silica, Liz, Klein, Agil, and Argo…all players whom I’d met in Aincrad. But Mutasina’s cold voice held nothing but mockery for my thoughts. “The darkness SAO gave birth to has only spread throughout The Seed Nexus and multiplied. Now those infinite worlds have coalesced into one. In Unital Ring, the darkness will be compressed again, and when its density surpasses its peak,
something new will result…something even darker and deeper. And I want to see that.” Then, as though remembering something, she added, “Of course…there are members of the Virtual Study Society here, too. They agreed to be exposed to the Noose of the Accursed. It might seem contradictory, but there is an unshakable connection of trust among us. And that is why I am certain you will be able to find that trust, too.” A heavy silence that lasted for a good ten seconds or more settled over the scene. It was Holgar, sitting flat on the stage, who broke it at last. “What is it…that you want us to do?” “Haven’t we all been saying it? I want us to pool our strength and work together toward the goal of the game…the land revealed by the heavenly light,” Mutasina said like the captain of a sports team. She laughed. “But of course, a tangible road map will be necessary. Don’t worry—our first goal is already clear.” “Goal…?” “Holgar, in your introductory speech, you said that the team called Fawkes was wiped out last night. It was neither a boss monster nor the Bashin who killed them. In a large forest, east of these ruins and far upstream from the Maruba River, they attacked a stronghold built by another team and were defeated.” As the players rumbled and murmured again, I felt the foreboding from before, and I realized what I feared was true. The team they called Fawkes was clearly the one led by Schulz that attacked the log cabin last night. And Mutasina bringing up this topic now could mean only one thing. “The first thing you will do is destroy that team.” “…Why would we do that?” Dikkos protested. “Just use your magic on them and make them your slaves, too, why don’t ya?”
Mutasina just shrugged it off. “It is not easy to succeed at casting Noose of the Accursed. The motions are lengthy, and the magic circle is impossible to miss. It will not work this effectively without the right situation and audience, such as a group of people who would believe an easy lie about casting a grand Buff spell on an entire gathering.” Holgar and the others were stunned silent. The black-haired witch continued gently, “Don’t give me those looks. It’s not that you were especially stupid. It’s that the foe we’re going to face is especially powerful. You see, based in those woods to the north, the Great Zelletelio Forest, is none other than the team of Kirito the Black Swordsman.”
6 It was 10:40 PM. After its very unexpected twists and turns, the “friendly” gathering dispersed, and Argo and I slipped out of the arena among the crowd. I wanted to leave early after checking it out, but the developments had required us to stay and watch every last bit. Alice and Kuro were left all on their own for too long. I wanted to get back to them now, but if we didn’t at least visit the shops, I’d have suffered this Debuff for nothing. We asked a passing player where to find a shop that would buy our items and made our way to a building at the corner of the market. The elderly merchant, who was well-built but pale, took a look at all the hyena, bison, and newt skins and bones and such, then quoted us a value of three el and seventy-eight dim. “……Three el?” Argo and I put our heads together. The hyenas were one thing, but the bison —officially named long-haired gale cattle—were one of the more dangerous monsters on the Giyoru Savanna, and the newts and axolotls from the giant wall dungeon were anything but weak. That was all he’d give us? The shopkeeper seemed to sense our skepticism of his offer. “Listen, folks, I’m sweetening the pot for you. They’re all rare materials around these parts, you see. But there’s only so much value in these untreated hides and such.” “Ahhh, so they’d be worth more if we tanned them ourselves first…” I considered retracting the offer to do that first, but I had no idea what tools would be necessary and what the steps were, and it was even less clear when we might actually visit this town again. I was hemming and hawing over the options when a man dressed in leather armor inspecting the shop’s display case in the corner turned and said, “Hey, buddy, three el and seventy-eight dim is a
huge fortune, you know that? I’ve been sitting here wondering whether to buy ten of these items for a single dim, if that puts it into perspective.” …Is he an NPC? Or a player? “In fact, where’d you get such high-quality furs? Is there a good collection spot around here? I’ll pay three dim for the details.” Judging that he was a player after all, I said honestly, “It’s not very close. Farther north of where New Aincrad fell.” “Ugh, you’ve been that far already? So I guess you’re one of those fancy frontline guys, despite the shabby duds.” “F…frontline? You call people that?” “At first, we had terms like hard cores or sprinters or top players, but at some point, we settled on that one. Hey, weren’t the front liners gathering at the coliseum? They were making all kinds of noise before it got real quiet. Something happen?” I almost reached for my throat but resisted the urge. “Nah…but I did peek in on them. Thanks for the advice.” “Sure thing.” The man turned back to the shelf, so I returned to the shopkeeper and said, “I accept your offer.” “Then we’ve got a deal. Thank you.” There was a jingling sound effect, and the materials on the counter vanished. A message appeared in my view, informing me that I’d earned 1-el Brass Coin ×3, 1-dim Copper Coin ×78. Just in case, I peered around the interior, but I didn’t see any bullets or gunpowder. I waved to the shopkeeper and left the building, exhaling and walking north. “So I guess Sinon’s hundred-el silver coin is serious cash. I guess it’s like the equivalent of ten thousand col in SAO or so? Wonder where she got it,” I said to my partner but didn’t get an answer. In fact, ever since we left the arena, she’d
been extremely reticent. “Um, Argo?” I said, staring under her hood. Argo came to a stop. When she finally spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically hoarse and limp. “…I’m sorry, Kiri-boy. You took the shot from that screwed-up spell in order ta protect me…” “What, you feeling self-conscious about that?” I asked after a split-second pause. I had to remind myself, That’s the Rat, not Little Miss Tomo Hosaka! and slung my arm around her shoulders. “If we’re going by that, I couldn’t even tell you how many times Argo’s strategy guides saved my hide. Compared to what I owe you from the SAO days, this is nothing. What have I always said? Every night ends in the dawn, and every curse wears off one way or another.” “Can’t say I’ve ever heard ya say that. But yes, it’s true that there should be a way to dispel that magic,” she said, nodding. That brought something to mind. “Uh, and speaking of that magic,” I said, “would you mind not mentioning it to Alice or Asuna for the time being? I’d rather wait until I’ve got the means to undo it before I talk about it.” “That sounds just like you, Kiri-boy.” She slipped out from under my arm, looking a bit more like the scheming info dealer I knew so well. “I won’t tell ’em. But I can’t guarantee what’ll happen if they slip me money.” With my new coins, we bought food from the stalls here and there, and scooped up as much free water from the well as we could carry, before we sprinted back to the abandoned room near the north gate. We put on our armor again at the entrance, then went inside. I sent a message while we traveled, but just in case, I knocked twice before opening the door. “You’re late!” Alice promptly scolded me. “Gra-rooo!” whined Kuro, the two coming in stereo. I rubbed at the black panther’s neck as it leaped on me and said to Alice, “Sorry, sorry, things didn’t exactly go to plan…” “You couldn’t have at least given me an estimate for when you’d return?”
“Uh…good point. I’ll report in next time…In fact, I suppose I should do the same for everyone guarding the town while we’re out…” “I already sent a message that we wouldn’t be back until midnight at the earliest.” “Th-thanks for that. Um, this is for you, if you want it.” I pulled out some of the food we’d bought and laid it on the aged table in the center of the room. It was just from a food stall, so the ingredients weren’t the finest, but each one had a rather enticing look and smell, from the pitasandwich-like thing consisting of crisped pouches of bread with grilled meat and vegetables inside, to the shish-kebab-like thing with heaps of sliced meat jammed onto a skewer and fragrantly seared, to the quesadilla-like thing with thin batter enveloping cheese and onions and cooked until melting. But when Alice saw the food, she just glared at me. “Kirito, did you…?” “Oh! No! I didn’t spend Sinon’s money on this. I sold some of my materials to make the money. Here, you can have it back…Unfortunately, we didn’t see any bullets,” I said, returning the leather pouch with the hundred-plus el in coins. At last, Alice’s expression softened. “I will trust you on the contents. So in that case, I happily accept your offer.” She took a bite of the quesadilla, chewed a few times, then said, “It’s quite good.” Alice was an Integrity Knight in the Underworld, a position more exalted than even the emperors of the human realm, but her tastes were not as refined. If anything, she preferred more rustic, common food. Of course, her machine body in the real world didn’t have the ability to eat, so she could experience cooking only in the virtual world. But in ALO, she typically requested hamburg steaks, stew, and spaghetti for meals. Asuna did her best to re-create curry and ramen for Alice, but that ongoing experiment had been interrupted partway by this whole incident. Praying that we’d one day get the chance to sit around the meal table with Alice in the real world, I took the shish kebab. Kuro pressed its head against my waist, so I slid some pieces off the skewer and fed them one by one to the
panther. Idly, I wondered what would happen to the world of Unital Ring once someone reached the land revealed by the heavenly light. Would it disappear forever? Would Kuro, Aga, and Misha go with it? “Aren’t ya gonna eat, Kiri-boy?” asked Argo, holding a shish kebab in one hand and a quesadilla in the other. I looked up. “I’m eating, I’m eating.” I grabbed a pita sandwich and lifted it to my mouth. I didn’t have much appetite, to be honest, but I needed to refill my TP and SP before we left. I took a huge bite out of the sandwich, getting a realistic sensation of thin-sliced meat and raw vegetables crunching between my teeth. Unital Ring’s graphics were far beyond those of any existing VR visual engine—and so was its taste modeling. Who would do this and why? I wondered for the umpteenth time as I ate the pita. The moment we passed through the north gate into the field, I realized that I had forgotten to do one thing. “Oh…Argo, did your ancient ghost quest update at all? Did you need to take care of that?” “It’s fine. We had more important things ta do,” Argo admitted. On her other side, Alice asked, “What in the world happened?” “We’ll explain as we move.” Once I was sure there were no other players in visible range, we started running northeast. I described the events at the gathering, leaving out one specific piece of information, and Alice’s expression grew more disturbed the further I got. When I was done, she couldn’t hide the fury in her voice. “Who does that Mutasina woman think she is?! If I had been there, I would have cut her in two!”
“Actually, she had a really high level. Probably higher than any of us.” “That does not matter! But…it is good to hear that neither of you were hit by that curse, if it got everyone else.” My omission, of course, was the fact that I had taken the Noose of the Accursed spell as well. Fortunately, the neck protector of my armor hid the curse line branded on my throat. When I admitted the truth to her later, she would be more than furious, of course, but if I told her now, she would turn back to the ruins and attempt to avenge me against Mutasina. “Well, I had plenty of practice cutting through magic in ALO,” I replied, glancing at Argo. The info dealer shot me a look that said, I know, I know, so I moved the conversation forward. “The real problem is that Mutasina and the hundred-plus high-level players under her control are going to be attacking our town. This isn’t the kind of situation we can defuse with discussion. We’ve got to be ready to fight back.” “When will they attack?” “Mutasina said it would be the day after tomorrow…the night of October 1st. Their plan is apparently to take two days to boost everyone’s equipment to a minimum of fine leather, so it might be later than that but definitely not earlier,” I explained. Argo deftly tilted her head with surprise as she ran. “But, Kiri-boy, you really think all hundred people who were there are gonna take part in the attack? Mutasina’s suffocation magic is pretty crazy, but she can’t do nothin’ to ’em if they log out, ya know?” “Sure, that’s true…but not logging in to the game means not taking part in trying to beat Unital Ring. Those were advanced players in that stadium, the kind you called front-runners back in the day. If their only other option was to throw in the towel and give up, I think they’d submit to Mutasina’s hand around their necks and keep pressing onward to the finish line.” “…I suppose you’re right. I mean, the frontline folks in SAO kept pressin’ onward, and their very lives were on the line.” “Yeah. They were insane.”
“I’d like ta go back to those folks and give ’em a survey. Ask who they thought the most insane was,” she said with a smirk. As this conversation continued, we blazed across the grassland at top speed. We had to make our way around a number of hunting parties, but there was no real trouble, and we made it back to the river—what Mutasina had called the Maruba River. I had given it a greater-than-half chance of being gone, but our dugout canoe was right where I’d anchored it in the water. Argo was quite impressed with our creation; I sat her in a spot near the stern, put Alice in front of her, and let Kuro take the helm again. I pulled up the anchor, tilted the oar, and sent the canoe swimming upstream. If only we could float upstream all the way back to the Great Zelletelio Forest. It wouldn’t take that long before we heard that same deep rumbling that we did on the trip out. It was hard to make out the scale of it by moonlight, but Alice estimated the drop at a hundred feet, a massive waterfall. There was no way this canoe—or any other boat—was getting back up there. “That’ll be it for the boat,” I murmured. Alice replied ruefully, “I’m afraid so. We’ll have to pull over to the side and break it down into materials.” “Aye, aye, sir,” I said, then wondered, Wait, shouldn’t that be, “Aye, aye, ma’am”? But then I realized Alice might not understand the English words anyway. I was about to turn the oar to starboard when Argo abruptly snapped, “Not so fast! Kiri-boy, you know there’s somethin’ you oughtta do before you break down this boat!” I blinked with surprise. “Do? Like what?” “C’mon, you’ve got a giant waterfall in a virtual world! There’s only one thing to do, dummy!” “…Ohhh.” I smirked as I realized what she meant. But it wasn’t as simple as that.
“Listen, Argo, this might be a game world, but it’s a realism-based VRMMO. One wrong move could completely shatter this boat.” “So don’t make a wrong move! C’mon, full speed ahead!” Argo instructed irresponsibly. Kuro yowled in agreement. I told myself that the boat would get destroyed one way or another anyway, and I pushed the oar forward again. “Ah…what are you doing?” asked Alice with some consternation. I gave her a vague “There, there” and continued our forward motion. “But, Kirito, the falls—” “There, there, there.” “The waterfall!” “There, there, there, there.” While this was going on, the canoe reached the wide waterfall basin. The massive falls and their ever-present roar were right in front of us. I focused on the falls, lit by the moon and stars, and saw huge rocks jutting out on either side that made it impossible to swing around. There was one point near the center of the falls, just to the right, where a single tree stuck out and left the stream a bit weaker beneath it. If we were going in, that was the spot. “Okay, here goes! Hold on tight!” I tilted the oar with both hands as far as it could go, rowing left and right at maximum power. The canoe accelerated swiftly, charging toward the deluge from above, which shone silver in the light of the moon. “Kirito! Don’t be reckless! Miracles don’t happen twice!” Presumably, Alice was referring to the fact that we’d fallen down this cliff and survived. I didn’t necessarily disagree with her, but I tended to play the wild card to her straight man. “No, there will be a miracle! I’ll make it happen!” I shouted baselessly. The canoe charged into the roaring falls at maximum speed. First Kuro roared, “Graoowr!” then Argo hollered, “Yahooo!” and Alice screamed, “Kyaaaaaa!”
All I could see was blue. Incredible water pressure clamped onto my shoulders, pushing the boat downward. If the side of the canoe dipped any lower, the water would flood in and sink us. “Hrrrrrrg!” In my mind, I wailed, I shouldn’t have done thiiis! but nevertheless, I kept rowing for all I was worth. The canoe did not move forward, however. Just when I expected it to sink for good, the pressure on the oar eased up. I looked back and saw Alice, water beating down directly on her back, holding the tip of the oar. With the strength of two together, the oar creaked against the great pressure of the water, but it helped shoot the canoe forward to break through the torrent at last. In an instant, the roaring and pressure were gone, and I had a brief moment of disbelief before I quickly stopped our forward progress. The boat slid several feet forward in calm waters and came to a stop. “…Is everybody all right?” I asked, since there was no way to tell through the pitch-black surroundings. Argo and Kuro responded from the front, and a moment later, I heard Alice’s exasperated huff behind me. “Well…we’ve survived, I’ll give you that. But I absolutely refuse to be party to a third attempted miracle.” “Thanks for the help,” I said, pulling a torch out of my inventory and lighting it. As I raised it higher, I thought about how much I’d like a lantern by now…or even better, light magic. The firelight exposed a mammoth natural cavern. Clusters of stalactites hung from the ceiling, and stalagmites grew from the banks of the water in strange configurations. Behind us, I could see a narrow exit through which the back of the waterfall was visible. If we’d hurtled into the waterfall even three feet to either side, we would have crashed into solid rock and sunk. With that done, I looked around the cave again. The floor was covered in gently flowing water, which meant we could keep moving the canoe forward… but something else was more important. “There…iron! Iron ore!” I cried the instant I spotted the reddish-black rock